Fight for Life
by AllyJames
Summary: Post-Killer Within. Daryl and Maggie go on a hunt for formula. Carol struggles to survive.
1. Chapter 1

He can't afford to lose his mind. Rick's so grief-drunk he doesn't even seem like he knows what's going on around him. T-Dog's gone. There's no one else right now. But he can't lead either. He can't tell the group what to do. So when Hershel points out that the little one can't exactly eat spam and canned peas, Daryl volunteers.

Maggie volunteering to cover him is unexpected and he wants to tell her no. Glenn and her father certainly do. But he does need someone to watch his back and she's quick and a smooth shot. And he sees in her eyes that she's looking for a kinetic solution to whatever she's feeling too. He nods his assent. And they go.

When Maggie swings her leg over the bike and puts her arms around him, Daryl's skin tingles. Her grip is light, just enough to keep her on and he begins to see how this trip might be a bad idea. Because all he can think about is Carol.

She didn't always ride with him. It isn't a comfortable way to spend days even if you are used to it. But he liked it when she did. Her arms were always tight around him, first out of terror when they left the farm, then just out of nerves because she'd never been on a bike before, and finally just because it felt right. Once, to tease him, she'd let go completely and Daryl had almost driven them into the median before he realized that her hands were in the air and she was laughing in his ear. It was the first warm day of spring. They didn't see a walker all day. They were warm and full and Daryl laughed too.

That strip of fabric burns in his pocket. He should throw it away, doesn't know why he hasn't thrown it away. It doesn't belong to anyone anymore. Just a wadded up, bloodstained, piece of trash. His fingers itch to touch it, but he can't reach his pockets with Maggie behind him. He can't bang his hands on the handlebars either or scream into the wind, not that he would anyway. But he can feel the rage clawing in his chest, so he tightens his grip and drives faster.

As the wind whistles in his ears, Daryl fights against the voices in his head. They read out the names to him over and over; the images flick like a slideshow behind his eyes. Mama, first, when he was just a boy, vanishing like the wispy traces of a good dream. Pop next, his corpse letting Daryl know the world was ending. Merle, Sofia, T-Dog. Carol. None of them leaving him with even a last moment of guilt to hang on to. Not snatched from under his fingers, not two seconds too late, not a left instead of a right at the fork. There was nothing he could do. For any of them. And that kills him. Always so good at taking care of himself, but he never even gets a chance to save the people who matter.

And on top of it, he's going to have to watch a kid die this week. None of that "miracle of life" bullshit. Not "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away." Fuck that guy. They haven't found any formula the eight months they've been on the road and they're sure as hell not going to find it now. This baby killed its mother and it's gonna take a chunk outta the rest of them before it goes. And once it's finished with their hearts, it'll come after their flesh.

Who needs hell when you have a world like this?

Daryl draws in a breath through clenched teeth and if Maggie notices that his shoulders shake, she doesn't try to sooth him. There was a light down that hallway. He keeps thinking that he should have gone through. He should have yelled out her name. He should have found her. Even if- Especially if.

Carol, of all people deserves to rest. The thought of turning a corner and seeing her there makes the bile rise in his throat. The thought of someone else doing it is unthinkable.

He vows to do it when they get back. When they get back and _deliver the formula._ They have to do it. The sense of purpose helps quiet his mind and he starts to think strategically. Where do people even buy baby food? Which places are the least likely to have been picked over? He's still thinking when Maggie squeezes him and points over his shoulder.

Next Exit: Wal-Mart

It's as good a place to start as any.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you guys for all the positive feedback on chapter one and your patience waiting for this one. Watching Talking Dead and hearing about the deleted scene where Daryl and Maggie talk about Carol and Lori made me change this whole chapter around to include one. Probably when the DVDs come out we'll find that scene to be a zillion times better than this one, but for now enjoy :)

* * *

It's a dead end. Of course. It's obvious even from a distance that the parking lot is occupied. There's no hope of sneaking past unnoticed and Daryl refuses to leave the bike. Maggie threatens to go in while he makes sure no one steals their transportation, but he vetoes that by pulling a U-turn and speeding up the road.

"What are you doing?" she screams into his ear.

"It's not worth it," he says and when she replies, he tunes her out, hearing just the wind as they travel on down the road.

If Carol could laugh right now, she would. How lucky is it that she's had so much practice crying silently? Because she doesn't think she's ever going to be able to stop. She wraps her arms tight around herself and rocks back and forth in a chair in the guard room she crawled into. She stares at the wall. Because every time she closes her eyes she sees T-Dog. Hears him scream. Sees the teeth tearing into him. He sacrificed what was left of his life for her and it was all for nothing.

Because behind her, they're waiting. Impatiently.

Outside the locked door the walkers moan and press against the door. Half a dozen when they followed her, but calling others all the time. Axel and Oscar obviously hadn't been very thorough in cleaning out their wing of the prison if that was even where she was. It was so hard to tell in the dark and in her panic.

One thing about her situation is abundantly clear: no one is coming for her.

If they lived, which is never a given, they wouldn't know where to start looking. And if they found T-Dog, well, they weren't likely to think they had a reason to keep looking. It's been hours and no one has called for her. The crowd outside her door keeps growing. Sooner or later she's going to have to decide how she wants to die.

It's something she never prayed for even on her darkest night. She's felt like she deserved to die. She's felt willing to do it for someone else. She's felt guilty for wanting to live. But Carol has never wanted to die. But if she waits, she could be here for weeks until she wastes away and her body will pace this room forever. Of course that still might be preferable to being torn apart. If only she had a gun.

But the only thing in this room she can use as a weapon is a dull pair of scissors. A billy club by the door is functionally useless. Even if she could swing it hard enough to take a walker down with one blow, she couldn't do it fast enough to take care of the whole group. She'll have to decide what to do soon.

For now she cries.

"We should have gone in," Maggie says, bringing it up for what feels like the fiftieth time as they sit around a too small campfire at the end of the day. "We could have gotten it."

"You a psychic now? What makes you think those shelves'd be any less empty than the others?"

"You don't know they weren't."

They made it to a few other towns before it got dark. More polite places with "Please take what you need" signs in store windows and only a few broken windows. And evidently what the people of these towns had needed was everything because all of the shelves are bare. Well not completely bare.

There were a surprising number of condoms left on the shelves. Most people had probably gotten too into the end of the world primordial thing like Lori and Shane had. Some of the boxes even had a couple months left before their expiration date. Without thinking, Daryl had picked one up and thrown it at Maggie.

"Here," he'd said. "We don't want to make this run again anytime soon."

He hadn't meant anything by it; he thinks he was even trying to be helpful. But Maggie had gone pale and her eyes went wide and then she'd left and gone to check another aisle before he could react. She'd been quiet the rest of the day. Until now.

"We can't go back empty handed. We can't."

Her voice wavers and Daryl risks looking up at her. She looks back.

"If the baby dies, that means Lori died for nothing. It means I killed her for nothing. I can't let that happen."

There isn't enough light for him to see if there are tears in her eyes, but he can hear them in her voice beneath the desperation and the determination and Daryl cannot take it. "Everybody fucking dies. Lori, T-Dog. Your people. My brother." He can't say her name. "That kid's gonna die too and none of it means anything."

"I don't believe that."

"Yeah? Well you're a fucking idiot."

Maggie doesn't reply and for a while all Daryl can hear is her trying not to cry and his pulse pounding in his ears. Reasons and meaning have nothing to do with any of this. If they did, they'd all be back at the compound. Carol'd be swaddling the baby up, singing to it while Lori slept off her trauma and Rick sat beside her bed. If there were reasons for people dying, Carol would have lived forever. Because there could never be a good enough one to take her out of this world.

"I cut her open. I stuck a knife in her gut and she screamed until she died. Pulling that baby out of Lori killed her and I'm not gonna let her die too. Do you understand me?"

He understands, but he doesn't answer and Maggie keeps talking.

"If it was your life on the line, they'd risk it for you. Lori- " –Daryl snorts- "She _would_ have. And  
T. You wouldn't have been able to keep Carol out of there."

"Stop."

"Don't you think you owe it to them? To be as good as they were?"

"Nobody could be as good as she was." They aren't the words Daryl planned on saying. He was leaning more toward "shut the fuck up" actually. Every time Maggie opens her mouth his mind goes to Carol. And every time he thinks of her, he can only think of her at the end, screaming and scared and alone. And his jaw aches from keeping his teeth clenched against the emotion. His nails, short as they are, leave prints on his palms.

"Carol?" Maggie asks, startled by the quiet whisper of his words.

"She could be a real pain in the ass. Pestering all the time. Always checking up on me. She, uh…" Swallowing hard and shaking his head, Daryl pauses. "She was gonna make me a part of the group whether I wanted to or not." There's more that he can't say. The way she trusted him so damn much and called him on his shit. The way it felt when he really made her smile, bright and happy. The way she always looked to him and for him during their encounters with walkers. The space she always left for him when they all gathered around a fire. How effortless it was. Feeling like he belonged to someone.

As matter-of-factly as she might say "her eyes were blue," Maggie says, "She loved you." Before Daryl can object she presses on. "Not even like that. Just- She did. You were both so similar. You were family. Everybody saw that."

It's too much. He can deal with what he felt for her, barely. He can't deal with what she felt for him. Can't deal with being counted on, being thought about at the end, being nowhere around when she needed him. He shuts the conversation down, picks up his weapon to walk a perimeter of their little camp. "Yeah, well. Guess everybody in my family ends up dead sooner or later."

"Daryl-"

"What is this anyway? Goddamn group therapy? Get some sleep. We got work to do tomorrow."

It isn't as bad as she thought. Most of the walkers are downstairs and the few milling around on the upper level aren't pressed against the door like she thought they'd be by now. She has a chance. Carol turns the scissors over in her hands and tries to wet her lips. She's dehydrated already and hungry and her eyes are burning from crying, but those aren't exactly new feelings for her. She still has enough strength to do what needs to be done.

One chance. One last ditch effort to save her own life and make it back to the people who have become her family. A year ago she wouldn't have had it in her. She does now.

Tucking the scissors into her back pocket and saying a prayer, Carol starts to move furniture.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Hello, all! Sorry this took so long. I had a major case of writer's laziness and that's really the only excuse I have. But I hope to be back at it with some regularity soon and in the meantime I apologize for the rustiness of this chapter and hope you enjoy :)

* * *

Maggie wakes up to Daryl nudging her leg with the toe of his boot. The sky is turning purple at the horizon, but you couldn't quite say it was dawn.

"You were supposed to wake me for watch," she accuses, trying to be instantly awake but finding sleep still holding a fuzzy grip on her senses.

Daryl shrugs, "I wasn't tired. C'mon, we got a long way to go."

The barricade part of Carol's plan only took her about an hour. She overturned the desk, the filing cabinet, the chair. A pint of bourbon, still three quarters full, actually fell out of one of the drawers. It was tempting, but Carol decided to save it for later. To celebrate being alive. She set it aside and finished shifting and stacking the furniture.

It was an impossible task to do quietly and she soon had an audience. The walkers scratched and groaned, but the door was strong and she wasn't worried. She forced herself not to be worried. Then she waited. Carol didn't want them all piling up at the door at once and she wanted it to be daylight, for whatever small difference in morale that would make.

Sitting back against the wall, she turns the scissors over in her hand, practices how she wants to hold them, the right angle to kill quickly. She can't sleep. She sings.

"The night we met I knew I needed you so. And if I had the chance I'd never let you go."

The hours creep.

One measly can of powdered formula. And that they only find because Maggie thinks to check behind the counter. One small can next to a turned over purse and a spilled can of Coke. Mom never made it home.

"We should take this back," Maggie says. We've been gone too long already and who knows how long it's gonna take us to find more."

We're never gonna find any more. Daryl doesn't say this to her, but he can't stop thinking it. He's been thinking it since they set out on this stupid quest. Maybe he'd hoped, just for a minute, but they've been to twenty convenience stores and every house they saw with toys in the yard and they've come up with one. Goddamn. Can.

Maybe the others will bury her before they get back so he doesn't have to see it.

"Daryl," Maggie says, but her voice is faint behind the buzzing in his ears.

"Daryl, we have to go back."

Back to what? His hands squeeze the edge of the counter.

"Daryl!"

"What?" He shoves the register off the counter and Maggie jumps back.

"Stop it," she snaps. "That isn't helping."

"Nothing we do is fucking helping," he growls back. The candy rack crashes to the floor. "Fine. Let's go back. Let's tell 'em there's no fucking baby food within thirty fucking miles but at least we got enough to keep her alive a couple days so Rick can say goodbye."

"We have to keep trying."

"For what? That kid was dead as soon as her mom spread her goddamn legs."

He doesn't expect Maggie to fly over the counter and slap him harder than he's ever been hit by a woman before. He certainly doesn't expect her to keep wailing on him afterwards, pounding her fists on his chest and shoulders. Daryl finally has to grab her arms to stop her and Maggie keeps straining against his grip.

"Don't say that. Don't you ever fucking say that again. She's gonna live, you son of a bitch. She's gonna live and we are gonna make her live. So you fucking get it together." With a final cry that is half fury and half sob, Maggie wrenches away from him.

"Get your shit together," she says. "We're leaving in two." Grabbing the formula off the counter Maggie leaves him alone in the store.

"Fuck," he says again, throwing another rack to the floor, but less violently than before. He rubs his eyes and says it again and then he stands there and waits for an answer. Why him? Why this? Why anything?

The answer comes to him in what he said to Maggie last night. There is no why. All the shit that's happened since the first mysterious deaths on the news. Everything that's ever happened his whole life. None of it has any meaning. There's only ever been one answer: keep going. Live. Live and deal with tomorrow tomorrow. It's all he's ever done. Maybe they have no way to keep the baby alive next week, but they can do it today. And Maggie's right. They have to.

On his way out the door, Daryl has to step over the 60% off rack he knocked over and one of the packages catches his eye. As he picks it up, a plan starts to form in his mind. A crazy, stupid, son of a bitch plan that has about as much chance of working as it does of ending the apocalypse. He takes the box outside and holds it out to Maggie.

"Fireworks?" she asks.

The door doesn't squeak as she cracks it open. Her blockade allows for 4 inches, no more, and a face shoves into the gap immediately. Pieces of skin and gore scrape off of it on the edges of the too small opening but Carol is beyond being horrified. She clutches the scissors hard and shoves the point of them into the soft flesh under its chin. She knows she's hit the brain with the creature goes limp and she rushes to pull her weapon out before it falls.

Another one takes its place almost immediately, climbing over the body to get to her and she aims for the eye. Now they've created a scene. The door rocks as half a dozen bodies slam against it and on instinct Carol leans back hard against it. She can't close the door, not even close and familiar terror starts to set in again. She has the furniture arranged between the door and the opposite wall. All the pieces are wedged snugly and so far they aren't moving. Carol prays to God they don't move.

Three more bodies drop at the point of her scissors. Her hands and her clothes are damp with blood and the smell she thought she was used to makes her gag. Her hand slips on the blade and she whirls away from the door in a panic.

"No. No. No. No. No," she chants as she scrubs furiously at the blood with her t-shirt. "Please, please, God no."

So much blood. None of it is hers.

"Thank you Jesus," she sighs, picking up the scissors and climbing back across the room.

She is so close now, she thinks. If she can clear this room. If she only meets single walkers in the halls. If she can navigate the labyrinth of corridors. She can survive.

By the time she hears the long squeaking scrape of the edge of the desk against the wall, it's too late to stop it. Screaming, Carol dispatches the zombie in the doorway and throws herself against the door. She can hold it, barely; there are fewer bodies on the other side than there were a few minutes ago. But there is also a pile of corpses on the floor and they won't let her close it.

Another one reaches for her, its head, shoulders, torso poking into the room. It stumbles over the pile of its comrades and Carol takes it out. She has to reach to do it and she's left trying to hold the door with one hand and a knee. A puddle of dark ooze leaks from the bodies and her shoes struggle to find purchase on the slick floor. She slips, splashing, and frantically throws her shoulder into the door. It doesn't do any good.

Pressing her back against the door she tries to brace her shoes against the floor, but everything is too slippery now. Carol can't hold it and they're coming in around her now. One of them makes a grab for her arm.

With one last prayer that she goes quickly, Carol jumps up and away from the door. She gets behind the desk as two of them trip and stumble into the room. Just two. Her heart leaps. Maybe. Maybe. Please, God.

The first one lurches forward, its mouth open wide as if it means to swallow her whole. It's missing one arm and has a hole in its right side and it could still tear her to bits. Grabbing for the attached arm, Carol pulls it across the desk and buries her scissors in the top of its head. She spins toward the other one, coming around the other side, almost on top of her.

The scissors are stuck.

It's so unconscionably cruel that she wants to laugh. Instead she might die. Carol kicks at the walker and catches it in the knee, crippling it momentarily. She doesn't wait to see if it recovers. She runs for the door, slipping in blood and tripping on body parts. It catches her ankle as she grasps for the outside and she will not die from a bite on the leg, she won't. So instead of trying to pull out of the shackling hold, she gives into it. Moving backward instead of forward Carol kicks at the walker's face with every last hope she's got, smashing its nose and freeing herself in the process.

Then she stomps at the head first with one foot, then with two, jumping on it until it's indistinguishable from road kill. Breathing heavily, she slumps against the wall, standing atop a pile of bodies, victorious.

Downstairs a door clangs open.


End file.
